GDC 2007: Sneak Peek

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Instead of J Allard this year, Microsoft's games will speak for themselves. What will be shown?

By Douglass C. Perry

While Microsoft's bald and fast-talking visionary J Allard won't be speaking as this year's Game Developer's Conference keynote speech, Microsoft will show up in a big way. On Tuesday, March 6, Microsoft's Developer Conference Suite will feature a handful of 45-minute demos of this year's pre-eminent role-playing games from BioWare's Mass Effect and Lionhead's Fable 2 to Mistwalker's Blue Dragon. New builds of big-name titles Forza Motorsport 2 and Age of Conan will be shown as well as a handful of Xbox Live Arcade games. Prepare for new details, all of which are attainable at IGN's own GDC 2007 index.

While GDC 2006 starts Monday, March 5, in San Francisco's Moscone Center with classes and lectures, the small show floor opens Wednesday and the keynote speech officially kicks off the conference with a massive bang. IGN will be in attendance for the whole gig. We'll take impressions and video of the whole show and we'll report on every relevant game we'll see.

Tuesday is a big day for another reason: Electronic Arts will make its presence known with four impressive titles. While Crysis and Hellgate London are for PC only, the industry's largest independent publisher will show off Pandemic's Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Valve's The Orange Box featuring a playable version of the Xbox 360 version of Portal. Make sure to keep your eyes on IGN as we report from the show floor at all hours of the day.

Epic's Mark Rein and Cliff Bleszinki will make their presence known as they sell even more Unreal Engine 3 licenses to the remainder of the game industry. Perhaps we'll get one of them to crack details on Gears of War downloadable content and updated news on Unreal Tournament 3.

Peter Molyneux will illuminate what's actually in Fable 2's forests.

IGN will report on a dozen more attending developers ready to talk about and show their latest games. Prepare to hear about the latest news from Q Entertainment (Lumines Live!), Ascaron (Sacred 2), Streamline Studios (Hoopworld), Pandemic (Mercenaries 2), Remedy (Alan Wake), and a handful of others.

IGN also will attend a bucketload of courses and lecture to boot. They include Writing for the Hero with a thousand Faces Storytelling challenges for Gears of War, The Future of Innovative Studios: Teem and Tools Behind Alan Wake, Advanced Audio Technique for Racing Games: Creating Audio for Forza Motorsport 2, Force Feedback in Racing Simulation with Forza 2, Three approaches to Halo-style Behavior Tree AI and Next Generation User Interface: What Does it Look like to you? Just to name a few.

Prepare for a "minor" influx of madness starting tomorrow. All of it is ready for you at GDC 2007.